Supermarket group ALDI has said that it will spend "a further almost €700,000 on Irish Bord Bia Assured Easter lamb lines" this year.

According to the retailer its "100% Bord Bia quality assured lamb products" are popular with customers all year round but at Easter it typically sees increased demand.

A spokesperson for ALDI said: "All of ALDI's lamb is supplied locally from Irish suppliers and we’re pleased to see positive growth in our lamb products this year.

According to the supermarket group it predicts it will sell more than 2,000kgs of its seasonal Irish spring half leg of lamb.

Separately Bord Bia has highlighted that tighter supplies have been a feature of the 2025 season "with a smaller lamb crop and a difficult lambing impacting lamb availability for processing". 

It has pointed to the decline in the ewe flock as one of the factors behind the tightness in supplies.

According to Bord Bia it is not just Ireland where this trend has emerged and said tighter supplies are also a feature in other key lamb producing regions of Europe and the UK.

According to Eurostat the production of sheep in the first half of 2025 is forecast to be 9.3% lower (at 14.2 million head) than it was in the same period in 2024. 

Spain is excepted to remain the main EU producer and of sheep and account for just over a quarter of the EU’s production. 

Three-quarters of the EU's sheepmeat in 2023 was produced in just four countries including Spain (26.5%), France (18.4%), Ireland (17.7%) and Greece (11.6%).

Last year the number of sheep slaughtered in Ireland stood at over 2.8 million head, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

That marked a decrease of 321,000 head or 10% when compared to the 2023 figure of 3.16 million.

Meanwhile in Ireland latest sheep trade indicates no movement in either the lamb price or hogget price quotes as cull ewe prices have increased at some outlets for the heavier-types.